Yale ’71ers Lise Pearlman (Producer/Creator) and John Lissauer (Music) were on hand in Sprague Hall to discuss and answer questions about their new film American Justice on Trial: People v. Newton.  An excerpt from the press kit follows:

American Justice on Trial

World Premiere SFFILM Festival, April 2022

Documentary, 40 min, 2022

Directed by Andrew Abrahams & Herb Ferrette

Produced by Lise Pearlman & Andrew Abrahams

Co-Produced by Abby Ginzberg & Robert Richter

A production of Open Eye Pictures

In association with Arc of Justice Productions

Inquiries: mail@openeyepictures.com

Website: JusticeMovie.com

Logline

The untold story behind the murder trial of Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton. The landmark case that put racism on the stand.

Short Synopsis

In one of the “trials of the century,” Black Panthers leader Huey P. Newton faced the death penalty for killing a white policeman in a pre-dawn car stop in 1968 Oakland. While Newton and his maverick attorneys daringly indicted racism in the courts and the country, and a groundbreaking jury led by a historic black foreman deliberated Newton’s fate, the streets of Oakland and the nation were poised to explode if the jury came back with murder.

Synopsis

AMERICAN JUSTICE ON TRIAL tells the forgotten story of the death penalty case that put racism on trial in a U.S. courtroom in the fall of 1968. Huey P. Newton, Black Panther Party co-founder, was accused of killing a white policeman and wounding another after a pre-dawn car stop in Oakland. Newton himself suffered a near-fatal wound. As the trial neared its end, J. Edgar Hoover branded the Black Panthers the greatest internal threat to American security. Earlier that year, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy rocked a nation already bitterly divided over the Vietnam War. As the jury deliberated Newton’s fate, America was a tinderbox waiting to explode.

At his trial, Newton and his maverick defense team led by Charles Garry and his then rare female cocounsel Fay Stender, defended the Panthers as a response to 400 years of racism and accused the policemen of racial profiling, insisting Newton had only acted in self-defense. Their unprecedented challenges to structural racism in the jury selection process were revolutionary and risky. If the Newton jury came back with the widely expected first degree murder verdict against the charismatic black militant, Newton would have faced the death penalty and national riots were anticipated. But Newton’s defense team redefined a “jury of one’s peers,” and a groundbreaking diverse jury headed by pioneering Black foreman David Harper delivered a shocking verdict that still reverberates today.